GLASS SOUP by Jonathan Carroll (funny books to read .txt) 📕

“Actually there was only one of them. He created the term for himself. That’s one of the things I want to show you.”

Ettrich waited for her to continue. He’d already realized that Isabelle had a tendency to talk in spurts.

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century here, there was a man named Joseph Kyselak who worked as a clerk at the court registry office, whatever that was. Kyselak originally wanted to be a poet or an actor but wasn’t any good. So instead what he did to get famous was paint his name all over the place. On anything you can imagine—buildings, bridges, furniture… Hundreds of Kyselaks everywhere. I heard he used some kind of stencil or template to do it. Or at least do it faster so that he could escape more quickly.

“Kyselak called himself an autographist. He even wrote a book that’s still in print about a walking tour he made of the Alps where he wrote his name on top of every mountain he climbed. I have a copy of the book. It’s called Zu Fuss Durch Oesterreich. He became so famous, or I guess notorious, for doing it everywhere that he was called in to the emperor’s office for a royal reprimand. Can you imagine that, Vincent? The head of the whole Hapsburg Empire summoned this one little madman to tell him to stop writing his name on things!

“Apparently the autographist came in, got yelled at, and acted properly ashamed. But after he left the office, the emperor discovered that he had somehow managed to write ‘J. Kyselak’ across one of the reports lying on the desk.” Isabelle constantly used her hands when she spoke. They made big circles or dove and swooped in the air like seagulls hunting over water. One or the other was constantly leaving the steering wheel to make or emphasize a point. Neither of them could stay put. Her face too was completely animated, completely alive. Reading it, it was easy to see which parts of a story delighted her and which were only a bridge to be crossed to the next really good part on the other side. Ettrich loved her manner and enthusiasm and couldn’t get enough of either.

“What happened to him?”

“He died very young—I think he was only in his early thirties. And of course most of his autographs have disappeared over the years, but there are still some left, especially up in the Wienerwald written on trees and stones. It’s the eeriest thing you can imagine to come across one out there in the middle of the Vienna Woods. I’ve heard there’s a club of Kyselak fanatics who trade maps of where they’ve found his work.

“That’s what I want to show you now—a real Kyselak. One I discovered a few years ago.”

“How did you find out about this guy?”

“Petras Urbsys.”

“Excuse me?”

She winked at him. “That’s the second thing I want to show you tonight.”

Isabelle’s Kyselak was written low and at a peculiar angle on the wall of a baroque church deep in the heart of the Fifth District. They stood very close together on the sidewalk while she shone her flashlight back and forth across the wall down there, again and again lighting up the signature for Ettrich. Eventually she turned off the light and they stood together in the cold, looking toward the dark wall.

Ettrich said, “Can you imagine how happy Kyselak would be to know that almost two hundred years after he did that, a pretty woman would be showing it off in the middle of the night as her treasure? That’s pretty damned cool.”

“Treasure? Yes, it’s true. I like that, Vincent. I never thought of it that way, but it really is a treasure to me.”

“Who else have you shown it to?”

She hesitated a moment before answering. “No one—only you.”

He was startled by how much his happiness leapt up at that news. Just him—only him.

“Come on—I want to show you something else.” She put her gloved hand through the crook of his arm and gently pulled him forward. It was the first time they had touched since dancing together back at the party. She led them away from where her car was parked. Ettrich looked once over his shoulder toward it.

She noticed it. “Don’t worry—this won’t take long.”

“I’m not worried. It’s only that I left my gloves in the car and was wondering if I should go back and get them.”

Without hesitating she slid her hand down his arm into the coat pocket and took his cold bare hand in her warm gloved one. What was most lovely about the gesture was that she made no big deal about it. She did it to warm his hand and nothing more. Only kindness, that rarest of things when it comes pure. With another woman in another circumstance it would have meant a moment, a decisive event happening between them. But instinctively he knew that wasn’t the case here. Her simple thoughtfulness delighted him.

He looked toward their hands and then at her. “Where are we going?”

“I told you—to Petras Urbsys.”

“I don’t know if that sounds like a person or a Russian weapon. Maybe some new kind of amphibious tank.”

She squeezed his hand. “It’s a person, although he is Russian, or was, because he’s Lithuanian.”

“Petras—”

“—Urbsys.”

“Urbsys.” Ettrich waited a beat and then snuck in, “Are you sure he’s not a weapon and a Lithuanian?”

Isabelle squeezed his hand again but didn’t appear to want to talk any more. They walked together through that nondescript working class district where the night air smelled of burning coal and wood, damp stone and winter. Cars passed, adding the acrid immediate stink of exhaust fumes. But it was late so there were not many. Once in a while a person appeared around a corner or walking toward them but these passersby kept their eyes averted. All of them were hurrying along to wherever they were going—home, or just out of that cold. It was a dull part of town